Can someone ELI5?

Sam Altman "donated" a bunch of money to US government officials.

US government officials said "we're thinking of ruining Anthropic if they don't play ball".

Sam Altman publicly said "oh no, don't do that, that's terrible, they're right to not play ball".

Sam Altman signed a deal to play ball after he said that, and it turned out he had been working on this deal even before the US government officials said the thing about ruining Anthropic.